For many years, pay telephone owners have relied on employees or contractors to collect money from their pay telephones by traveling to a plurality of pay telephones, by emptying coins previously deposited in the pay telephones, and by transporting the coins back to the owners. Unfortunately, some of the "collectors" have been less than honest and have stolen large amounts of collected money from the telephone owners. Such theft has been enabled, in part, by the unsupervised access of the collectors to the money and by the absence of any accurate records as to the exact amount of money previously deposited in the pay telephones. Without accurate records, the owner of a pay telephone could not determine whether or not any money had been stolen by a collector. Such theft has also been enabled, in part, by the absence of coin-handling devices designed to prevent theft of money by the collectors. In some older pay telephones, deposited coins fell into open-top hoppers within the pay telephones for keeping until the coins were dumped out of the hoppers and transported to the pay telephone owners by collectors. With unsupervised access to the hoppers, the collectors could brazenly pocket all of the coins from the hoppers or could pocket a portion of the coins from the hoppers, thereby "skimming" money from the owner of a pay telephone.
In an attempt at stemming this theft problem, the manufacturers of newer pay telephones have incorporated, into each pay telephone, a security-sealed, coin receptacle box which resides in a steel-reinforced vault within the pay telephone and which receives coins accepted by the pay telephone. To collect the money from the pay telephone, a collector removes the coin receptacle box from the phone's vault, inserts an empty coin receptacle box into the phone's vault, and transports the removed coin receptacle box to the phone's owner. The coin receptacle box is, typically, manufactured from steel and has a tamper-resistant cover with an opening that allows accepted coins to pass from the phone's coin handling mechanism into the coin receptacle box for temporary storage until the box is replaced by a collector. The cover has a pivotally-mounted metal door which automatically rotates into a first position to cover the opening when the coin receptacle box is not within the vault of the pay telephone and which automatically rotates into a second position to uncover the opening (i.e., allowing accepted coins to pass through the opening) when the coin receptacle box resides within the vault of the pay telephone. By limiting access to the coins within the coin receptacle box when the box is outside the pay telephone, the metal door makes it difficult, but not impossible, for a collector to gain access to the coins within the box, thereby reducing the opportunity for theft of the coins.
While such prior art covers and their metal doors have had some impact on reducing theft by collectors, the covers and metal doors have certain disadvantages and/or problems. First, the size of the metal door (and, therefore, the size of the opening) in such a cover cannot be made large enough to allow the cover to pass coins of certain foreign countries which measure up to 35 millimeters in their maximum dimension. This disadvantage results from the way in which the metal door operates and from dimensional limitations on the size of the metal door. To cause the covering and uncovering of the opening, the metal door pivots, relative to a pivot point, along a fixed arcuate path within the cover. The metal door has a protruding member which extends from the cover through a groove in the top of the cover and which rotates between first and second ends of the groove in response to engagement with an internal component of the pay telephone. The amount (i.e., angle) of rotational movement of the protruding member and, therefore, the amount of rotational movement of the metal door is determined by and, hence, limited by the internal component of the pay telephone. Therefore, the path of rotation and the amount of rotation are fixed by factors external to the cover and a larger metal door, if desired to enable passage of large coins, would be forced to travel along the same path of rotation and through the same amount of rotation. Unfortunately, because the maximum size and internal dimensions of a cover are determined by and, hence, limited by the size of the vault within the pay telephone and by the dimensions of a coin receptacle box, a larger metal door cannot physically travel along the pre-determined path of rotation through the pre-determined amount of rotation within the pre-determined internal dimensions of the cover and still fully cover and uncover a cooperatively-sized larger opening through the cover. Thus, physical limitations render it impossible to increase the size of the metal door and opening of a cover, using the above-described prior art design, to allow passage of large coins of certain foreign countries.
A second disadvantage of the prior art cover is that the cover is often accidentally triggered by a collector who drops the coin receptacle box and cover or, in some other way, subjects the cover to a mechanical shock prior to insertion of the box and cover into the vault of a pay telephone. Such triggering prevents full rotation of the metal door and, therefore, prevents the door from fully opening when the coin receptacle box and cover are inserted into a pay telephone vault and, thus, prevents the proper acceptance of coins by the box. Briefly described, the prior art cover includes a triggering mechanism which is armed by a technician of a pay telephone's owner at a central site. Once armed, the triggering mechanism allows the cover's metal door to rotate in order to uncover the cover's opening when the coin receptacle box and cover are inserted into a pay telephone by a collector. When triggered (as is normally done upon insertion of the box and cover into a pay telephone), the triggering mechanism allows the metal door to rotate toward a position which covers the opening upon removal of the coin receptacle box from the pay telephone and enables the cover to resist forced re-opening of the metal door by a collector attempting to pilfer money from the box. Thus, if the triggering mechanism is accidentally triggered with the metal door already covering the opening (as is the case with an empty coin receptacle box headed for installation into a pay telephone), the cover resists what it believes is a forced re-opening of the metal door and attempted pilfering of money resident in the coin receptacle box. When such accidental triggering, or "false triggering" occurs, the collector must return the box and cover to the technician at the central site for re-arming before it can be installed into a pay telephone. Unfortunately, the prior art cover seems to be excessively prone to such accidental triggering and, hence, creates a great deal of inconvenience for collectors and for the pay telephone owners.
The prior art cover has a third problem which is, perhaps, associated with the triggering mechanism and/or operation of the metal door. Through use of the cover over time, it has become evident that some collectors attempt to steal money from a coupled coin receptacle box by jamming the cover's metal door during removal of the box and cover from a pay telephone. By sticking a jamming object (i.e., a rod, pencil, etc.) into the cover's opening, a collector is able to remove the coin receptacle box and cover from a pay telephone while preventing the entire covering of the cover's opening by the metal door. Then, once the box and cover are out of the pay telephone, the collector removes the jamming object and subsequently removes the coins from the coin receptacle box through the portion of the opening not covered by the metal door.
A fourth problem of the prior art cover has also become evident over time and involves the jamming of the metal door and other components of the cover. During normal operation of a pay telephone and the cover, coins accepted by the telephone fall from the phone's coin handling mechanism and into the coin receptacle box passing through the cover's opening. Unfortunately, a gap between the metal door and the panel of the cover allows some coins to become caught in the gap, thereby jamming operation of the metal door and causing subsequently accepted coins to be directed away from the cover's opening or, possibly, to back up within the phone's coin handling mechanism causing it to malfunction. Such jamming of the metal door by coins also allows the coins to serve as a jamming object, enabling the theft of coins from the coin receptacle box as described above. Additionally, the proper operation of various components of the prior art cover may be restricted, or even curtailed, by coins residing in the coin receptacle box rising, from beneath the cover, to a level sufficient to jam the operation of the components.
Prior efforts to solve these disadvantages and/or problems have proven to be somewhat ineffective or not cost effective. Accordingly, a need yet remains for a means to protect the pay telephone owner from pilferage by collectors responsible for collecting money periodically from the phones which does not induce malfunction of a pay telephone or cause excessive inconvenience to the collectors or to the pay telephone owner. It is to the provision of such a device that the present invention is primarily directed.